Since the Supernatural Chicago Convention 2016 is just less than two days away, I thought, huh, better get last year’s convention experience written. It is just exactly the distraction that I need in order to ignore the packing and the preparations I still have to do because, haha, who needs a stress-free last-minute-running-around-my-room-like-a-headless-chicken-and-just-shoving-everything-into-my-luggage? Certainly not me.

I digress.

ChiCon 2015 was a different experience from the year before. One, because I actually had an inkling on what to do instead of whipping my head around with my mouth open in awe. Two, because I had a Gold ticket that gave me access to a closer seat, an automatic admission to the Saturday Night Concert event, and a chance to get some of the actors’/actresses’ autographs and exchange some friendly greeting with them. It was also surprisingly emotional for me, as I facilitated between deliriously happy at the convention and trying not to be conspicuously upset at some personal stuff going on with me. But we’re not going to talk about that.

Tumblr has a rich community of artists and art enthusiasts. Most of what I have been exposed to concerned various fandoms; fans of shows and books posting amazing digital fanarts, colorful interpretations of characters, and character ask blogs which answer purely with drawn out scenes. It’s amazing how creative people could get in regards to stories and characters they love.

It was March of 2015 when I decided to start dabbling in digital art. I had Photoshop Elements already installed months prior, originally hoping to make gifs with it and miserably failing. Naturally, I then tried to edit photos with it, and promptly got bored. At this point, I was just trying not to regret splurging on an expensive computer program that I apparently had no use for, and then I thought, hey, I can draw a little bit on paper back when I was a teenager. Why not try doing some digital art?

I complain a lot about this blog being virtually useless because nothing ever exciting happens in my life, and yet I forget to blog about the most exciting thing that happened to me in 2014?

SmileyBunny: *heaves a gigantic brick and prepares to throw it*

Save it, SB. To be fair, I liveblogged the whole thing in my Tumblr account and spammed my poor meager amount of followers with blurry pictures and wailing, but since I’m never ever [ever] going to reveal my tumblr URL where people who know me in real life might find it, I’m going to make a separate post to share here.

As you may or may not know, I’m a huge fan of Supernatural. And one of the best things about it is that the show does several conventions every year in different locations. They do one in Chicago every year, and I’ve been wanting to attend one since 2012. Well, back in October of last year, I finally saved up enough money and snagged myself some tickets.

Ever since discovering the art of calligraphy as a useful and immensely satisfying (and a little bit costly) hobby, I’ve always wanted to do a handwritten correspondence with someone who lives in another country. In short, a penpal. Although I have been wary of looking for penpals off the internet because, well, it’s the internet and you never know if you’re writing to a potential stalker or a creepster or a predator. I have a short anecdote that I will share in a separate post about how I learned to be paranoid about strangers over the internet. But that’s a story for another day.

Back on topic. Following the calligraphy tag on tumblr had me looking at skilled calligraphers who correspond with their calligrapher friends with their fancy cursive and flowing scripts and pretty flourishes and parchments and wax seal stamps, and of course the one thought that ran through my mind was: “Ooh, that looks fun… I want one.”

The wax seal stamp, I mean. The pretty cursives and flowery flourishes takes years of practice that both frustrates me and makes me determined. The penpal position is still open because I’m wary of creepsters. But parchment and the stamp are pretty attainable. So, I want one.

Problem was, customized wax seal stamps are really freaking expensive. And knowing that I have no use for it because I don’t have anyone to write a letter to, I gave up the idea of buying one.

But I didn’t give up the idea of having one. So naturally, I scoured the internet for do-it-yourself wax stamp seals, and I particularly liked this shank button wax seal stamp and this one made from rubber carving block. There was another really cool set of instructions from RageHaus that used wooden dowels and wood burning tools, but unfortunately, the website is not available anymore.

I haven’t done any of these, because I don’t own any wooden dowels, wood blocks, wood cutting tools, shank buttons or any abandoned chess sets lying around. But then I remembered that I grabbed a pack of bakeable clay on a whim (someone should definitely keep me away from Hobby Lobby because I could buy the whole store), and got the idea to create my own.

It took about four hours of labor (that might be because I work at the speed of a baby turtle), but the finished product, which I dub my trial stamps, came out decently:

Clearly I need to improve my wax seal application…

I had fun making these, so I thought I’d share.

Kato Polyclay

What you’ll need:

-Kato polyclay, or any kind of polymer clay that you prefer. This one that I randomly grabbed worked out perfectly.

-Wax paper. Or a plastic bag. Something that you can use to cover your working table with because the clay will be greasy when you start to knead it.

-Pencil

-An inkless pen. Or anything pointy. A toothpick would work, but make sure to smooth out the end.

-An oven. This is quite essential as you’re going to have to bake the polyclay if you don’t want a limp, useless wax seal stamp.

-A candle. Or a lighter. Or a match. Anything save a stove that produces fire.

Instructions:

1) Pinch off an appropriate or desired amount of the clay that you think you’re going to need for your stamp. Or heck, just use as much as you want.

This is approximately 1 ounce of the polyclay.

2) The clay is going to be firm, so you have to knead it. Knead it like you intend to give it the best massage of its life. Doesn’t matter if your technique could be likened to a bull dancing the cha-cha on top of a person. That firm, unyielding clay would soon be like putty in your hands.

Not putty yet, but getting there.

3) Roll the clay into a cylinder. Or shape it into an elongated cube. Or a polyhedron, if you’re feeling that creative. Just as long as the “face” of the stamp remains flat, shape the “handle” into a kick-ass lightning bolt, if you have the patience. Just make sure you don’t make the “face” too wide.

I shaped mine into a Rook in order to have two “faces” in one stamp. This is intentional. No, I didn’t choose this shape because I tried and thoroughly failed to shape a human head and instead ended up with a weirdly-shaped blob. What are you talking about?

…Okay, fine. I don’t know, okay? It was supposed to be a head, I swear, but it ended up like this. Rooks are much easier to shape.

4) Pencil out a design for your stamp face. Make sure that the design will fit within the stamp face.

For the 1st face, I chose “W” for Winchester. Why? Because Supernatural, that’s why.

*Tip 1: One way to do this would be placing your stamp on a paper and tracing the edges to determine the boundaries.

Please ignore the fact that this isn’t the same clay.

*Tip 2: If you want something more complicated than a simple monogram (for example, a lamp, or a human transmutation circle, idk), copy it from the internet, paste to MS Word, resize if it’s too large, and print it off. BUT don’t be a douche and claim the design as your own.

I chose the anti-possession tattoo symbol from Supernatural for my 2nd stamp face. I printed this off after three failed attempts on drawing it on paper.

When I finish this, I’ll have a wax seal stamp that will ward off possession on anything that I stamp it on. Letters that you don’t want altered? Slap on an anti-possession symbol and see if Crowley comes near it! Mwahaha!

5) Darken your design with your pencil. Like, really darken it. Trace your design with enough pressure that when you put your face on top of it, it will leave an imprint. The darker, the better.

It looks easy enough, right? Wrong.

6) Take your clay stamp and place it on top of your design. Turn the whole thing upside down, with the paper now on top, and scratch it to make sure that the clay takes up the pencil imprint.

Slap the pattern onto the “face,” and then lightly scratch the surface.

You barely see it from the photo, but the imprint is there.

Here’s the “W” for my 1st stamp face.

7) Take your pointy tool (a pen, a toothpick, or anything that you can try and poke somebody with and they respond with “ow!”) and start carving your stamp face. The image will naturally be reversed. Try not to make it too shallow that it won’t show on the wax seal when you try it out, or too deep that the wax may break off inside.

My pointy tool is my mechanical pencil. It works out wonderfully.

Carving this took about two hours in total and I was ready to puke by the end of it.

8) When you’re done carving your clay, smoothen out the edges, wipe out fingerprints, make sure the rest of your stamp face is relatively flat.

I sliced off the edge in order to get rid of the unintended outer circle. So now it really looks like a chess piece.

Save yourself the trouble and just carve out monograms. This only took me fifteen minutes.

9) Preheat the oven. Place a wax paper on top of the baking pan, put the stamp clays face down. According to the Kato polyclay directions, it must be baked for 10 minutes in 300 degree Celsius. If you have another brand of polymer clay, then follow its specific directions.

*CAUTION: Be careful in taking the pan out of the oven. I know it sounds noble, but “suffering for your art” doesn’t mean suffering 2nd degree burns because you got so excited that you grabbed the stuff straight from the oven.

11) Let the clay cool off and make sure you’ve baked the malleability out of it.

12) Voila! Your stamp is ready to be tested!

Here goes nothing!

To test your stamp:

1) Grab a piece of paper, melt the wax seal onto it.

2) Immediately stamp your…er, stamp onto the wax seal, hold still for a few seconds, and then carefully lift up your stamp.

Okay, let me try that again.

Took a couple of tries, but hey, it works!

Seriously, just do monograms. They’re a whole lot easier to do.

Is it successful? Alright, time to color!

Bam! Rook = Impala because chess rooks are powerful towards end games and the Impala turned out to be the most important thing in the universe.

S.W. and D.W. on the side. I’m so clever I didn’t even know it. *preens*

The Winchester Family Motto

WHAM! Have a letter that you don’t want demons to get a hold of? Slap an anti-possession symbol on it.

I like to think The Men of Letters have a variation of this somewhere in the bunker that Sam has yet to find.

Of course, I made this before season 9 finale aired, so sorry Dean. Guess you won’t be sending anyone any letters any time soon.

Or opening any letters. Sam can totally start a diary now.

…

…

Okay, I’m done.

If you ended up with an unrecognizable blob of clay, I apologize profusely for wasting your time.

***

[ETA: I posted this months ago in my Tumblr. It was still sitting in my drafts here for some reason. Eh, posting it now.]

To tell the truth, for a few months now, I’ve been thinking of deleting this blog.

I’m not a regular updater, that’s for sure. One of the main reasons is that nothing interesting ever really happens to me. I don’t travel, I don’t have a lot of friends that could tell me stories, and I’d rather stay curled up in my bed with a good multi-chaptered fanfiction rather than going outside for a stroll.

Blogging about my woes when I’m feeling depressed seems ill-fitting here–those are better done in my private journal where I can be as vulgar as I want to be.

All my fandom stuff are on Tumblr, which none of you people who know me in real life will ever find at the risk of me dying in mortification. My calligraphy stuff is over there,too, and so is my knitting stuff.

My fanfiction stuff is over at livejournal, which I also have not been updating as much as I would like to.

I haven’t made much progress on the novel-writing stuff, and complaining here about my severely lacking skills with going on about it is unappealing.

And I don’t really have profound wisdom to impart about an interesting/controversial topic. Not saying that I’m as shallow as a puddle, but because I feel like everything I have to say has already been said by someone much better at expressing what I would have liked to say.

The point is, apart from the occasional poems, this blog is virtually useless. Also, Bahay Kubo as a blog name is misleading, because I don’t write about nipa huts, and I don’t post folk song guitar chords.

So.

To delete or not to delete?

…Nah.

I’m changing my blog title though. But I’m leaving out the Bahay Kubo page because it seems like people are finding it helpful for their MAPEH projects.

From now on (or until I’m finished customizing, anyway), this blog will be called “Don’t Quote Me On That.” Why? Because I said so. Do I really need a special reason?

SB, you and me, we’re not in any kind of relationship for me to be three-timing you–

SmileyBunny: And now you’re denying me! All those years we had, all those DBSK posts I had to endure, all those times I spent mocking you when you were angst-ing about them, you’re saying they didn’t mean anything to you?

You’re not exactly helping your case here, SB.

SmileyBunny: This is just– You know what? I give up. Go back to your stupid Tumbler–

Now that you mention it, I have around 1,400 posts there and I regularly blog practically everyday. I have 25 people following me, which by Tumblr standards isn’t really anything but– Uhm, SB, why are you so red? What are you doing— SB, wait. No, I’ll shut up about Tumblr, I promise! Just, please drop the couch, please! SB, have mercy–OOF!

Carry on, my wayward sonThere’ll be peace when you are doneLay your weary head to restDon’t you cry no more~

Insert kickass guitar solo here.

Ahem. Yes, I am well aware that my writing gets lamer (and more vulgar, come to think of it) every year. But that is what happens when there’s something I am jumping out of my seat to share, and couldn’t be bothered thinking of more proper ways of introducing it.

The brief excerpt from above is the chorus to a classic song of Kansas’, called “Carry On My Wayward Son.” It is one of the main tracks from the show I’m currently, reluctantly, helplessly obsessed with. And how the heck did I find myself almost reaching former DBSK5-level obsession here, when I’ve sworn off being swept off my fangirl feet ever again, you ask?

It started with Glee, of all things. Glee.

That’s right, I watch Glee… or used to, anyway, before this new obsession took over me. The musically-inclined side of me loves it because it helps me discover good songs I would have been sorry not hearing due to over-focusing on a certain K-pop/J-pop boy band that broke my heart to a million pieces and danced upon the shards (yeah, so I’m kinda/maybe/still a little bitter about it. Sue me. No, wait…). Having Darren Criss on the cast was also a treat, with me being one of the original Starkids fans (He was Harry-freakin’-Potter before he was this Blaine-dude. Back off, gleeks). I haven’t been able to watch more after this certain episode of season 3, but I’m planning to… Maybe sometime this summer.

But I digress. So there I was— sitting in front of the computer, one cold November afternoon last year— catching up on the episodes I’ve missed, when I heard one of the most gorgeous songs I have ever heard in my life: “Fix You” by Coldplay.

After spending time melting on my seat into a puddle of goo on the floor at the scene of Will reassuring Emma with this gorgeous song, I finished the episode (Asian F) and immediately searched Youtube. It was then that I came across this fanvid, which turned out to be my demise.

It piqued my curiosity – Who are these people? Why is that girl on fire? Why are they crying? Ew, what’s that gross thing coming out of his mouth? Why does one of the main lead look dead? Whoa! He crawled out of a grave! Man-hugs, cool! What is this show?

I read the comments under the vid, and found out that the show is called “Supernatural.” It sounded interesting. It sounded promising. A show about two brothers? With supernatural elements and a lot of angst-fest? Sounds like my kind of show. What? Horror genre? Erm… Err… Gore? Gross! Not for me. But… (sigh) I’ll give it a chance.

Now, you see, I hated horror, and I hated gore even more. It is why I wouldn’t even notice Halloween passing by if not for the tons of candy and colorful costumes you can see everywhere. A horror movie is synonymous to gore-flying-whichever-way to me. You can make me watch one if it’s really good, but most horror movies I’ve watched (which admittedly doesn’t reach a two-digit count) just don’t have a plot line that is engaging enough for me to ignore the blood and guts liberally spilled throughout.

So with great hesitation, I clicked on the show, head turned away, one eye closed, and the other half-opened in case blood and guts start splattering on the computer screen. I was doubtful I could even finish one episode. But lo and behold, the pilot episode sucked me right in, and the moment I watched the infamous “jerk-bitch” banter between Sam and Dean Winchester within the first half of the show, I knew the horror element wouldn’t be enough to not keep me watching.

I’ve been meaning to make a cover of this song for years now. I couldn’t find chords in the internet, so I just guessed them. Finally recorded one today. I tried playing the guitar with a pick to make the sound sharper, but I only succeeded on distracting myself and getting lyrics wrong. It’s not the best of covers, and I couldn’t control my voice very well through the high notes. *hides face in embarrassment*

I’m writing my own version with English lyrics. Almost done with it, though whether or not I’ll record it depends if I find time/confidence for it.

They say that there are two kinds of special bonds in this world— two kinds of strings that tie people together.

One of them is the red thread, the bond that signifies romantic love: True love, fated chance of two people destined to be together. It roots from the very core of a person’s heart. It is like an addicting drug, like fire igniting a passionate connection that can only be defined with hearts being bonded together. Most common but hardly ever unbroken, it is a bond that could either mean a person’s happiness or destruction. It is a fragile string that will either stand out the test of time, or simply be cut.

The second one is the silver thread, the bond that symbolizes a different kind of love. It signifies friendship: true friendship that forms from the very roots of the soul. It connects two strangers together by the essence of their person. It is like water— calm, enriching, warm and easily molded, adjusted and shaped. Most rare but hardly ever broken, it is a bond that becomes the definition of a person. It is a piece of string that is the hardest to find— but once tied, it remains timeless ly strong.

The red and silver threads are the strongest bonds a person could ever form in a lifetime…

But if you are forced to cut one to keep the other… which would you choose?

… Man, who writes prologues like this in a story that’s titled “Choices?” It’s cheesy, it’s corny, it’s against everything that I believe a good introduction should be, it has freaking similes! Similes!

I know I should just hack it away from my draft, but I can’t bring myself to. I love it, but I hate it. I love that I wrote it, but I hate that I wouldn’t even give it a second glance if I was the reader, not the writer.

I’ve been writing “Choices” since 2008, and I still haven’t managed to get it past the editing process. Four years of labor, and I still haven’t finished it, which is pathetic because it’s just a fanfic and it shouldn’t take this long, but it’s my baby and I’ve been developing it endlessly from a four-page drabble into an almost one hundred-page draft.

And now I’m having thoughts about changing the POV from first person to second person, except that I’ve written the entire thing in first person and though I hated it for a while, I relentlessly edited it until it worked. And it was fine like that. But then, recently, I rewrote a section, one measley section and changed it to second person, which turned out ten times better than it was. And the thought of rewiring everything is exhausting, and the first person POV is how I wrote it. I don’t know what to do.

Who said writing was easy? It’s like pulling a tooth. Without anesthesia. And with a plier.

Hello!

Ikang is a 25-year-old person who writes stories and is an avid reader of fanfiction. She (shamefully) admits to being a master of procrastination who tries to find a cure for chronic laziness, a mediocre writer who dreams of one day publishing a novel that will move people's hearts, and an aspiring digital artist-wannabe who is hungry for validation. She also likes to think she’s funny, so if an attempt at a joke leaves you cringing, she requests that you inform her so that she may never make any such jokes again.